7th OCTOBER 2001

The Wednesday, October 10, 2001 performance by Yat-Kha at
the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage in Washington DC will be broadcast
live on the Internet at 6 p.m. Eastern:
www.kennedy-center.org/programs/millennium/


To hear the Yat-Kha feature on The Connection from October 4th, 2001:
www.theconnection.org/archive/2001/10/1004b.shtml



CMJ New Music Report Issue: 732 - Sep 17, 2001

"Currently on tour in the U.S., the members of Yat-Kha have acquired a
reputation as the punks of Central Asian music - leader Albert Kuvezin does
play an electric guitar. But more accurately, the group's remarkable
overtone vocalizing is a revolutionary update of traditional Tuvan throat
singing, with a mix of instruments both ancient and modern. The songs are
about horses, traveling, springtime and girls (typical Tuvan subject
matter); the sound, meanwhile, takes wonderfully angular twists as on "Tozhu
Kyzy," with its lopsided riff, Jew's harp and backward sample. But the
spectacular throat singing is only one part of Yat-Kha's arsenal. This is a
complete band with a very individual, melodic worldview that seduces the
listener quietly but completely. Think of Yat-Kha as "alterna-Tuva" and
you're getting the picture."
www.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=31613


 
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com

"Aldyn Dashka" - Yat-Kha

"The voices are extraordinary, ranging from a melodic ox bellow called
kargyraa to the "whistling" sygyt style that suggests a flying saucer
revving its hyperdrive. But Aldyn Dashka improves on its predecessor, Dalai
Beldiri, with songs as memorable as the throat singing within. When Albert
Kuvezin croaks the tender nature tune "Chorumal Bodum" in a rock-bottom bass
timbre that might make Bigfoot quake, he's handsomely framed by a
two-stringed igil fiddle, throbbing electric guitar, and trotting bass.
"Kozhamyk" contrasts Kuvezin's gravelly tones with Aldyn-ool Sevek's heroic
operatic tenor that's as clear as a Siberian stream. Both are lifted by a
vowel-packed chorus and wah-wah guitar figures that somehow fit right into a
folkie song about the attributes of local womenfolk. Just a hint of dub
piano complements the brew.

The rousing "Takh-Pakh Chasky Tan" boasts a virile back-at-the-ranch beat,
big percussion, martial guitar lines, a peppy hook, and uncanny human
growls. Russian traditional ditty "Oi Moroz" features a punky gut-bucket
guitar solo to contrast its lively tune, plus unexpectedly rich chorale
singing from the crew. Back in the realm of pure vocal artistry, Kuvezin
amazes on the a cappella "Bai-La Mongun" by augmenting low notes with
harmonic highs that dance a second melody in an exquisite example of
throat-singing dexterity. Forget the hype that tries to sell this ensemble
as the Tuvan equivalent of a garage band. Aldyn Dashka is as well-rounded
and oddly beautiful as any of the region's traditional music. --Bob Tarte"


 
Chicago Reader
September 21-27, 2001

[excerpt from World Music Festival 2001 guide; main photo: Yat-Kha]

September 22, 2001
3 PM, Gene Siskel Film Center ($8)
* YAT-KHA
"For many years Tuvan throat singer Albert Kuvezin was far more interested in
the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix than in the singular folk music
he grew up with. But as a teenager in the Soviet Union, he wasn't always
able to obtain or play rock music, and when he finished high school he
discovered a new appreciation for Tuva's native traditions. While studying
music in Kyzyl, the republic's capital, he heard a connection between
overtone singing and the blues -- something the American bluesman Paul Pena,
the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary Genghis Blues, would notice
several years later. Kuvezin began touring the USSR in state-sponsored pop,
rock, and traditional music groups, all the while formulating a fusion of
his own. After Gorbachev launched his reforms, Kuvezin moved to Moscow to
gain greater access to the new sounds that were flooding the country, and
there he put together the first version of Yat-Kha as a Tuvan-techno act.
The group performed at a 1990 music festival in Kazakhstan for an
international audience that included Brian Eno and great folk-rock producer
Joe Boyd, and eventually parlayed the exposure into gigs in Europe, moving
toward a more rocklike sound that blended nicely with the countrylike twang
of Tuvan music. (Early in the decade Kuvezin also cofounded the Tuvan
folkloric group Huun-Huur-Tu.) The band's latest album, Aldyn Dashka --
recorded in 1999 and released on Yat-Kha's own label after the BMG
subsidiary Wicklow folded -- is its best yet, a brilliant demonstration of
how to bolster, rather than obliterate, a traditional form with rock. Radik
Tiuliush adds a number of Tuvan stringed instruments, Makhmud
Skripaltschchikov plays bass, and Kuvezin plays electric guitar and throat
sings in the rare kanzat style -- an impossibly low rumble that makes the
deep chanting of Tibetan monks sound like a falsetto. Young female singer
Sailyk Ommun, who's not on the album, will join the group live. Yat-Kha will
perform their songs at the Old Town School on September 23, but at this
performance they'll play a largely improvised sound track to the 1928 Soviet
silent film Storm Over Asia (see film listings for more information).

--Peter Margasak
www.chicagoreader.com/music/sidebars/WORLD2001.html


 
Chicago Tribune (circ. 655,000)
September 16, 2001

ET CETERA WORLD MUSIC
Tuva's Yat-Kha goes for throat

Bill Meyer

"When Genghis Khan set out to conquer the world, he turned to the Central
Asian region of Tuva to recruit his best horsemen. Eight centuries later the
Tuvans have come to conquer the West once more, but this time they're using
songs instead of swords.

Yat-Kha, a quintet from the nation's capital city of Khyzy, combines
traditional Tuvan throat singing with a bracing dose of rock 'n' roll;
they'll be doing three Chicago performances as part of the city's World
Music Festival.

Throat singing is a polyphonic vocal technique accomplished by tightening
the throat muscles in order to amplify and control a few overtones.

Since childhood, Albert Kuvezin, the electric guitar-wielding leader of
Yat-Kha, has tended to stick out. When he was a little boy he was thrown out
of the choir and told to never sing again; one of his early bands was not
allowed to play by Communist authorities, who didn't approve of their long
hair and loudness. Writing by e-mail from Tuva, he recalled that "in my
teenage [years] and youth I played in different bands as a bassist and
guitarist. My own were `Last Chance' and `Philadelphia.'"

Kuvezin was a founder of Huun-Huur-Tu, the quartet that first promoted Tuvan
music in the West, but he left the group because their folkloric approach
afforded him no opportunity to express his affection for the music of Jimi
Hendrix, Deep Purple and Suzi Quatro.

During Yat-Kha's two-night stand in Chicago the quintet will alternate
between a straight concert performance and providing a live soundtrack to
the 1928 silent movie "Storm Over Asia." The movie was filmed in Buryatia,
Tuva, and Mongolia by Soviet director Vsevolod Pudovkin shortly after the
Russian civil war of the 1920s, and it was suppressed for more than 70 years
because it so unsparingly documented the violence Tuvans endured during that
conflict."
----------

For information on the two weekend Gene Siskel Film Center screenings, call
312-742-1938; for info on the Saturday Old Town School of Folk Music
concert, call 773-728-6000.
www.chicagotribune.com/features/arts/chi-0109160337sep16.story

Copyright © 2001, Chicago Tribune


 
In case you didn't catch it, Albert Kuvezin of Yat-Kha was interviewed on
The World (on over 100 public radio stations around the country). You can
hear the segment in Real Audio at:
www.theworld.org/archive/glohit/2001/08/20.htm

Feel free to pass this and other links on to concert presenters, tastemakers, and
 friends...